This book examines the impact of French society on English culture in the second half of the eighteenth century. In an age when many historians suggest the inexorable rise of the middle classes was being driven forward by industrialization, the English aristocracy stood apart from the trend towards commercial respectability, and revelled in all that was best in cosmopolitan fashion and ideas. Welcoming the French Revolution as a re-enactment of 1688, they watched aghast as their world descended into the Terror, and the onslaught of Bonaparte.

An exploration of scribal news, which played a major part in the topical reporting of political developments in Britain during the 17th and 18th centuries Evaluates its significance, which has long been overshadowed by the seemingly inevitable rise of print media Builds on recent research that critiqued assumptions about the superiority of print Seeks to explore the relationship between manuscript news and politics in Britain from c. 1660-1760 in more detail and on a broad scale